On the day that it becomes illegal to take pictures of police engaged in counter-terrorist operations – in practice a ban on taking pictures of the police – it is worth noting events in Brighton recently where police set up outside a cafe and photographed people attending a meeting about the environment.

According to the Brighton Argus, members of the Cowley Club, which was hosting a meeting of Earth First, "were confronted with four uniformed officers outside the Somerfield store, opposite the venue, snapping visitors using a paparazzi-style lens". One of the club members, David Biset, said the police were behaving in a deliberately "intimidating manner". He said:

Avenues of dissent are being closed down and police feel able to treat politics as a police matter. There was no suggestion of anything going on outside the building. The police have no reason to be there beyond intimidating people. You shouldn't be put on a database simply for attending a meeting.

The local MP, David Lepper, agrees that the police operation was designed to scare activists rather than prevent crime, and has written to the divisional commander for Brighton and Hove demanding to know why officers were photographing people engaged in a political activity. The police have refused to comment other than to produce the usual assertion that this was a normal police operation.

But of course this action breaches the Human Rights Act, which guarantees freedom of association. It is clear that people will not feel free to meet on these legitimate matters of concern if the police are taking photographs and adding images to a database. What is worrying is that this operation may be an intimation of things to come with the new central intelligence unit set up by Acpo to monitor activists and extremist groups.

Although I write as someone who has no particular axe to grind about the police, I am beginning to wonder whether we have a serious problem with a police force that believes it is entitled to monitor political activity. Set against the new law banning photographs of the police – which surely will be used by every policeman parked on a double yellow line or meting out the rough justice – there is increasing tendency of the police to photograph people in an aggressive fashion. It shows an innate lack of respect for the innocent citizen and the conventions of our free society, which is extremely disturbing.

Yesterday the Mail on Sunday published an extensive investigation into Acpo and alleged that not only was it making vast amounts of money as a private company – a status that seems extraordinary given the money received via the Home Office from the taxpayer – but that it had been pushing a self-serving agenda that mimicked the governing board of a national police service, yet without the accountability and scrutiny expected in most public bodies. The Mail called it "One of the most mysterious and powerful organisations in Britain".

The paper, which has led a lot of reporting on the crisis of rights and liberties in this country, went on to comment:

Now it turns out to be a comfortable gravy train for retired police chiefs and a grasping business charging the public up to £70 for criminal records information which it can obtain for 60p.

In response to this story, Acpo produced a statement from its head Ken Jones:

British policing is among the best in the world and in counter-terrorism, in the way we investigate murder, in forensics and many other areas of criminal investigation we are recognised leaders through the efforts of chief officers working through Acpo. Beyond 44 local police forces there is no national operational policing structure and so chief officers voluntarily combine through Acpo to agree approaches, lift the performance of the police service and protect lives.

He did not address the substantive issue that Acpo is run on largely secret and unaccountable lines and in the rest of the statement he doesn't deny Acpo's profiteering activity. The paper is right when it says "Parliament should urgently investigate this strange, unaccountable body and bring it under proper control". We need to take a serious look at the police and policing in Britain and establish certain ground rules which say that the police have no business assessing what is and what is not legitimate political activity.

I end with the quote from Winston Churchill, which I first used in the Summerfield lecture at the Cheltenham Literary Festival two years ago. It bears repeating.

If you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a small chance of survival. There may even be a worse case: you may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.

For all our sakes this battle must be fought now and not left until it is too late.